Posted on Monday, May 08, 2017

With the rapidly changing advances in consumer technology, telecommunication networks are struggling to keep up. Technology is expanding, with increasing dependency on data communication and increasing connectivity. The wireless data requirement has also risen to an unexpected level. Data traffic is projected to increase by 40-80 times by 2020. The main question is how to address this increasing demand? Can we provide better, faster and cost-effective connectivity?

Photonic devices are the key enablers to efficiently transmit high-speed data optically over a long distance. Lasers are at the heart of a photonic device, which transmits data efficiently with minimal loss. But with the increasing data traffic, existing photonic devices would not be able to meet future demand. Active photonic devices generate extremely high heat flux that must be efficiently removed to maintain performance and reliability; furthermore, active photonic devices must be controlled at temperature precision (better than ±0.1 °C). Today’s thermal technology is at the limit and cannot scale with growth in the network.

When current state-of-the-art solutions for photonic packages are used, the overall thermal load of the system goes up, and the whole package becomes bulky and inefficient. There is a serious need to come up with a new and concentrated way of an efficient, thermal management system. Our group aims to bring out an optimised solution.

I work on thermally integrated smart photonic systems (TIPS) project. My research is focused on thermal management of photonic devices for which we are developing micro-thermoelectric coolers with integrated lasers. We can thus take out maximum work/power from the same laser, which was not possible with the present state-of-the-art solution.

The development of micro-thermoelectric coolers will pave the way for enhancing the efficiency of the photonic package. Moreover, the package size can be decreased due to which a large array of lasers can be incorporated into a single package with high density. And my answer to the tremendous growth in data traffic is: yes, we are ready to face the future. I work with a team of energetic and visionary experts who always respect your ideas and views. My research is being fully funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020.